Boiler Room: Revisited
by Jocelyn Szmanda
Summary: Varick/OC When two cocky coworkers' tension catches up to them, anything can happen...
1. Meet Taylor

                Taylor McCormack rushed through the hallway of the brokerage, her long red hair flowing behind her.  Had she not been so pissed off, it would have been a beautiful sight.  Chris glanced up from his computer screen and shrunk in his chair.  He knew what she was coming for.  Him.

                "Where the hell is Varick?" she growled at an intern.  He silently pointed to the desk.

                "I can explain," Chris said and stood up to defend himself.

                "What is there to explain?  We had a meeting with potential clients, possibly the biggest this firm has ever brought in, and your Jewish ass wasn't there."

                "What's this got to do with me being Jewish?" he grinned.

                "You better get that smartass grin off your face before I knock it off."

                "Look, lady, you aren't above me."

                "Lady?" she asked incredulously and her hands went to her hips.  "Who the fuck are you calling Lady?"

                "I see how it was an inappropriate comment," he smirked.  "Or at least untrue."

                "Shut up.  You have the files."

                "Excuse me?"

                "The client files.  We're still in this meeting, by the way, and no, you cannot join in, but I need the files."

                "Why would I hand them over to you?  I've been working on bringing in that company for six months!" he said and held the file just out of her reach.

                "And I care why?" she asked, an eyebrow raised.  "If you're so into this client, you should have showed up for the meeting."  She grabbed the file from his hand and hurriedly marched back to the conference room.  Not five seconds after she sat down, the door opened again and Chris walked in.

                "Mr. Varick, we've been expecting you," the boss said and tapped his watch.

                "I know, I apologize, my mother was rushed to the hospital this morning."  Taylor rolled her eyes as he ripped the file from under her hands.  She threw an evil glance at him as he began explaining their prospective portfolio.  

                "Wait, Mr. Varick, is your mother okay?" a woman from the client's company asked.

                "Pardon me?"

                "Is your mother okay?"

                "Yes, Chris, you mentioned your mother being rushed to the hospital," Taylor smirked and he poked her under the table.  She glanced down at his hand to see his middle finger raised.

                "At this point, we think she's going to be okay.  It was a minor stroke."  She desperately wanted to call him on his lie, especially since she knew his mother was in Bora Bora for the week, but knew it would jeopardize bringing in millions of dollars to the firm.  She was expected to present complete civility in business dealings of any kind in front of clients, no matter how much bullshit it was.  After his investment presentation, the clients signed the contract.  After shaking their hands and convincing them they weren't making a mistake, Taylor headed out the door.  They weren't making a mistake; that much had been true.  Hill & Associates was easily the most respected broker firm on Wall Street.  They hired only the best stockbrokers out there.  Of course, bringing in the best meant bringing in the cockiest, and they had definitely found two of those with Chris Varick and Taylor McCormack.


	2. Maintaining Professionalism

                She sat down in front of her computer, eager to do some real stock trading for once instead of sitting in stuffy meetings, and Chris slid in between her chair and her computer monitor.  "What do you want now?" she sighed in frustration.

                "What did I ever do to you?"

                "What?"

                "Why do you hate me so much?"

                "Because you pull shit like this morning.  Not showing up for meetings, being an hour late when you are there, keeping the file locked away in your desk so no one else could even cover for you.  How am I supposed to keep this place running if you're off 'taking your mother to the hospital'?" she said, using air quotes.  He sat on her desk and slipped out of his Armani jacket, tossing it to the side of her cubicle.  "And that's another thing.  How the hell can you throw around a fifteen hundred dollar jacket?"  A wide grin crossed his face.

                "You recognize Armani when you see it," he observed.

                "Who doesn't?"

                "Most people."  He paused as she tried to reach around him to get to her briefcase, but failed.  "You know, we're not that different, Taylor."

                "Like hell we're not."

                "Sure, we have different mannerisms, you show up at work on time, I don't, you go to meetings, I don't, but when it comes to this job, we're exactly the same.  I work my ass off for this firm and you know it.  You know it because you do the exact same things.  This could be your off day, the one day a week you get to sit at home and supposedly relax, and I know exactly what you'd be doing."

                "And what's that, Varick?"

                "Glued to your computer screen or CNN, watching those numbers scroll across the bottom of the screen.  Wishing you were here.  You're just like me, Taylor.  This runs in your blood.  Even on Sundays, you're predicting what's going to happen on Monday."

                "You forgot one thing," she said and tilted her head slightly to the side.

                "What's that?"

                "I'd be thinking about how much I hate you," she said and stood up and walked away from the desks, headed straight for the bathroom.

                "That's total bullshit."

                "What the fuck are you doing in here?" she asked.

                "Talking to you."  He locked the door and leaned against it.  There was one thing she would give him; the man was built like a Manhattan club bouncer.  Even if he had left the door unlocked, there was no way she would even try to match with him physically.

                "I thought walking away and coming in here was a good enough clue that I was done with the conversation," she replied as she nonchalantly began reapplying her makeup.

                "Well, I'm not.  And unless I'm mistaken, a conversation generally works better with two people."

                "In this situation, you may very well be mistaken."

                "Cut the bullshit, Taylor."  She glanced over, mascara brush poised just above her eyelashes, and looked back at the mirror.

                "What are you expecting me to do?  Magically drop the two years of harassment we so joyously have given each other?  No way.  Coming in and messing with you everyday is part of the routine."

                "Why do you refuse to call me by my first name?"

                "What?" she asked with a laugh and closed her mascara.

                "Never in my life have I ever heard you call me Chris."

                "And?"

                "Just curious.  Do you have something against the name Chris?"

                "No," she scoffed.

                "Then what's that about?"

                "Maintaining professionalism," she answered.

                "And again, I answer with 'That's total bullshit.'  If you were going for maintaining professionalism, you would call me Mr. Varick, or stockbroker number 9, or something to that effect, you wouldn't call me Varick like it's a curse."

                "Then what's your theory, Dr. Freud?"

                "Avoiding relationships.  You don't let anyone in your life."

                "How dare you presume to know so much about me?" she demanded.  "You don't know shit about my life."

                "I'm about three seconds away from knowing everything about you."  

                "You think you know me?"

                "Yes I do."

                "Tell me five things about me that have nothing to do with this firm."

                "Taylor, there aren't five things about you that aren't involved with your job."

                "Wrong again," she retorted and ran an eyeliner pencil under her eye.

                "Five?"

                "Five."

                "You love Italian food, your mother was a high school teacher, your dog, which is a Golden retriever, is named Bear, you let loose on Saturday nights, which for you involves dancing in clubs, and despite being incredibly attracted to males, you admit that you would sleep with Portia de Rossi if the issue was ever raised."  She raised an eyebrow and as she put her makeup back in her purse, returned the favor.

                "Despite being Jewish with a highly orthodox mother who gets pissed off about it, you date outside of your religion, you live in Brooklyn next door to a woman with seventeen cats, your last girlfriend, Rajah, dumped you because you were too infatuated with your career, you're a closet opera fan, and you have an addiction to strip clubs."  

                "I wouldn't call it an addiction per se," he said with a grin.  

                "So what was the point?  We proved we could rattle off five things about each other.  That doesn't mean that we know each other."

                "Taylor, how many people in this building could you list five things about?"  She didn't answer.  "And that proves my point."

                "What about you, Mr. Popularity?  Jesus, you have these people crawling up your ass to ride on your coattails."

                "I have friends here just like anyone else."

                "And that, Chris, is where we're different."  She blew past him and unlocked the door, letting herself out.  As she sat down at her desk, she pulled on a headset and adjusted her hair, ignoring the glares of the other girls in the office.  She didn't know why they all hated her, aside from the fact that she was a total bitch to them.  Two hours ago, she would have said jealousy.  Her little conversation with Chris, no, Varick, was fucking with her head.  Why was she so standoffish to everyone else?  Standoffish wasn't the right word.  She stood up to the people in this building like no woman ever had before.  She downright scared some of the men.  Unsocial?  Maybe that was closer to the truth.  She purposely locked everyone in that firm out of her life.  But why?  Did she really think that keeping coworkers from becoming her friends would change the way she was seen by the partners?  Just because she was a tough bitch, did that mean she couldn't make friends?  She didn't know.


	3. Pushing Buttons

The next day at work, something about Taylor seemed different. Chris watched her as she yelled at a new kid, probably around 23 years old. "What the fuck is your problem? You knew that was a bad investment, why did you transfer those funds?"

"I…uh…" the kid stuttered.

"Was it a mistake to hire you? Are you not capable of working for this firm? Because there are plenty of people out there who are." The look on her face could have killed. She looked like she was on Fear Factor and was determined to eat six slugs.

"Taylor, lay off," Chris said as he approached the two. "He's just a rookie."

"I know, but all the rookies make the same fucking mistakes. They blow it with transfers from solid stocks to jumpy ones. You can't pull that shit right now, not with everything as messed up as it is from the war."

"And yes, he should have known that, but Christ, do you have to tear him a new asshole?"

"This isn't any of your business, Varick."

"Fine," he said and held up his hands in defeat. He glanced down at the kid, practically shaking in his shoes, and shrugged. "I tried." He made his way back to his desk and watched as she looked at the kid's file, then back at the kid.

"Just don't do it again, okay?" she said, sighing in frustration. The kid got up and practically ran back to his cubicle in the corner. She stared blankly at her computer screen, then rubbed her temples with her hands. She was stressed out enough already, she didn't need kids like that fucking with her clientele. But he was just a kid, and he would get better with practice. And what the hell was with Varick jumping to his rescue? He himself had reamed every rookie to ever walk in the doors of the firm.

"You okay?" she heard an all too familiar deep voice ask.

"What do you want?" she groaned.

"Just answer the question."

"I'm fine. I will be, anyway." She glanced up and he nodded, stuffing his hand into the pocket of his Gucci slacks. "Christ, do you own Fifth Avenue?" she asked, noticing the continuance of his designer clothes.

"I have my connections."

"Women you've slept with, I presume."

"There are a few." She rolled her eyes and rubbed the back of her neck.

"Why hast God forsaken me?"

"Because you're a stock broker," he answered with a grin and headed back in the direction of his ringing phone. She shook her head with a quiet little laugh and picked up her headset as her phone rang.

"McCormack, I need you to move two thousand shares to VTR right now," her boss, Jim Young, said hurriedly.

"I can't do that, trade on that is shut down for three days, regulation orders."

"Do you like your job?" She paused, realizing what he was insinuating.

"Consider it done." She hung up and tapped into the system, both transferring the shares and changing the trade date to two days before. Quite illegal, but not something she hadn't done before. Their firm was infamous for pulling shit like that. "And everyone wonders why I'm so stressed out," she mumbled.

"Talking to yourself again?" Varick asked, reappearing in front of her desk.

"Jesus Christ, don't you have a job to do?"

"I'm doing it. Young told me to come talk to you about setting up an appointment with RDT to see if there's a way we can make the VTR buyout go more smoothly. He thinks the market value is going to go down drastically unless we can get some media hype behind it."

"That's funny, because he just ordered two thousand of his shares transferred to the VTR account."

"Interesting," Chris said, an eyebrow raised. "What's he up to?"

"Hell if I know. He's always doing something."

"Any suggestions about the proposition?"

"Of working with you? I've definitely received better propositions."

"I promise to show up for the meeting," he smirked.

"Fuck you," she laughed.

"Did I just hear Taylor McCormack laugh at work?"

"No. That was an evil laugh. More like a cackle." She eyed him for a second, then excused herself to the restroom. She shut the door behind her and stared at her reflection in the full length mirror. What the hell was that about? Laughing at work? That was completely unacceptable. Especially in the presence of Varick. He was the one person that she forced herself to hate. So many things about him completely turned her off. He was rude, overly confident, and made entirely too much money to be a legitimate broker. And what was with all the tailored suits? But at the same time, he was the one she had the most in common with. Highly intelligent, dedicated to his job, actually considered his personal appearance when he rolled out of bed and into the office, and loved his family. 

Then there were the things she was attracted to, not that she would admit it to anyone. He always smelled so good. Always fresh, perfect amount of cologne, and always the right cologne – Jean Paul Gaultier. The scent of that could make a woman climax. And every time he walked by, a waft of it flew in her direction, almost as if he had intentionally sent the breeze her way. And the clothes, she had to admit that they helped. He always looked incredibly professional, but wore them with so much confidence and so comfortably that he looked like he was wearing joggers and a t-shirt. And underneath them was the body of a bodyguard. An incredibly attractive one.

But he made her so mad. All while being sexy as hell. He pushed all the right buttons in her. Unfortunately, most of the time they were the wrong ones.


End file.
